There are four ways for an established brand to create an online community. Each method offers something unique to help support and build your brand. Here’s a look at those methods and how they can work:

- Integrated into your current site, utilizing constant site navigation, with community nav being secondary

- A sub domain of your corporate site (www.yourbrand.com/community) with similar branding, but dedicated community navigation.

- An unique URL with distinct branding and dedicated community navigation.

- Within a currently trafficked community site such as Facebook or MySpace.

To integrate a community site into your current corporate site, means that the community functionality is spread throughout all pages within the site. Top level navigation stays the same no matter where you’re at, allowing users access product pages and fellow brand enthusiasts at any moment during their visit, with minimal clicks. With community integrated into your site, all pages have the potential to have dynamic content. This allows for user generated content throughout the site, an outlet for brand evangelists, fresh, stickier content and a reason for repeat traffic. The current traffic to your corporate site is also an easy way to jump start traffic within your new community. On the down side, allowing users to create your content opens your brand to some risk. If user opinions are damaging, you may be allowing for more damage than growth. If you moderate out negative comments, you may be opening yourself up for even further backlash in the blogosphere. Strictly from a user interface standpoint, an integrated community site is ideal, but giving your audience access to your brand content is dangerous. Unless your brand has loyal followers and is strong enough to avoid heavy criticism, the benefits of an integrated community may not outweigh the risks and the amount of maintenance involved in monitoring such a sight.

To help separate brand messaging from user generated content, a sub domain of your corporate site may be a successful execution. The brand connection is still strong, but there’s a separation between corporate sponsored messaging, and user generated content. This separation provides a buffer for the brand and the community, which can allow for community self policing. Links from the corporate site can act as a main driving factor for initial traffic, but the flow between pages wont be as successful as an integrated site.

Some brands don’t have the evangelists, or products to rely on a community to create the content. Because of this, creating a community site which has it’s own branding and focus helps build outside the current brand. This is a guerrilla tactic, and a subtle way to make lasting connections with your audience. The key here is finding a concept that relates to your brand, and is unique enough to create a new niche online community. This type of community may be the most work in creating, but provides the greatest ability to expand your audience and how users view your company.

The last community strategy is to build where individuals already are. Take your message and focused concept to a platform that people are already interacting with. Thanks to Facebook’s open API, companies can build community tools that reflect their brands unique attributes without having to build new traffic. The downside to building within another community, is the lack of brand control. Your message is only a piece of many other messages.

To determine which community strategy works best for your brand depends on your audience, your brand, and your positioning. There are many paths to go down, but choosing one of those paths will lead to more traffic, more exposure, and greater success.